Jason Alexander & Peter Tilden

Best friends and TV/radio legends Jason Alexander (Seinfeld) and Peter Tilden (Writer/Producer) sit down with Brian to chat about everything from how Jason found out he couldn’t cut it in magic, the ways Jason may be more like George Costanza than he admits, and their brand new podcast “Really? No Really?”, an iHeartPodcasts series that you can listen to now at https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-really-no-really-107027693/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I had braces for nine years. I got them on,
they came off. I was seventeen and I remember the
braces came off and I had a date that evening.
So I went to the gym and I'm in the
shower and I'm, you know, coming out of the shower,
and I'm drying off my hair and I look in
the mirror and I see something like a thin spot

(00:21):
at the very very top, about the size of a quarter.
And I went, I literally said, are you frigging me?
I don't get a day one day.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hello, this is Jason Alexander and I was on Seinfeld. Hi,
this is legendary radio DJ and writer producer Peter Tilden. Okay, no,
it's just me, Brian Baumgartner. But I swear you're going
to hear from them soon. Hi everybody, and welcome back

(01:09):
to Off the Beat. We've lost a recording somewhere. We
didn't hear them introduce themselves. But that's okay. I can
not only host the show. I can I can play
different characters as well. Apparently today, as you just heard,
we've got not one not too well, yes, two guests,
and they are real life besties. Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden.

(01:36):
You may know Jason Yes from his time on Seinfeld
playing George Costanza, or perhaps you know him from his
extensive Broadway career, which we discuss in depth today, or
from Pretty Woman he played Philip Stuckey. And of course

(01:56):
we also have writer producer Peter Tilden on today to
talk about his career and working from KABC to co
creating Hit the Road with You Guessed Jason Alexander. Also,
they just started a brand new podcast together called Really, No,
Really and Yes Really that is the name, and it's

(02:21):
a good one. So I'm not going to keep you waiting.
I know many of you have wanted the stars of
Seinfeld on today. You have my favorite because he's the first.
Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden. Everybody enjoy.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Bubble and Squeak.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Bubble and Squeakna.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
Bubble and Squeak.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
I cook get every mon lift ooh from the ninety.

Speaker 5 (02:53):
Before, Hello, everybody there, We look at this.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
Wow, look at you too, look at you?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Really no, really you even have the poster strategically placed.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
You bet. We don't get around and we know this
is just audio. We don't care.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
I promise we'll grab a picture to at least show that.
How are you How are you both doing?

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Oh? We're living the dream right you saw?

Speaker 3 (03:36):
So we were at the the Our Heart Award show
where you hosted, which that's amazing.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
We're just we're, like Jason said, couldn't get any better. Yeah,
pinch me.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
When when did the two of you meet? Now? Was
it on Bob Patterson?

Speaker 1 (03:51):
No? No, no, it was so As you probably know,
Peter was one of the foremost talk radio hosts in
Los Angeles for thirty years.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
Yes, and Peter, what.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Was that KBC back then when I met you?

Speaker 4 (04:02):
Or it was KBC?

Speaker 1 (04:03):
It was KBC and I came in, you know, promoting
Seinfeld in its earlier years. So it's probably around ninety two.
I would imagine maybe second season or third season, went
in to you know, do a straight up interview with Peter,
which does not exist, by the way, there is no
straight up interviews with Peter. And we were giggling and
having a good old time and it just felt like,

(04:25):
you know, we clicked. And after the after we went
off the air, Peter said, Hey, it's early I want
to go grab some breakfast and I went, I kind
of do.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
We've been eating for twenty seven more years. We haven't
stopped eating.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
He was actually at that breakfast where he said, I've
got your next show after Seinfeld. It was exactly the
one we did, but but we've been the best friends
ever since.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
I want to go back even before that and talk
a little bit about both of you growing up. When
did you realize you started to have interest either in
performing or the arts, or Peter, you know, having a
career in the arts as well. When did you start
getting excited and interested about that.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
I'll go first and get it out of the way,
because it's not as interesting as yours with magic and Broadway. Now.
I was trapped in a home with insane people. Okay,
who would help if you open my refrigerator. Everything was
upside down, waiting for the last drop. They came from Europe.
They had nothing, so I always thought I was upside down.
The heat in the house it was convection currents coming
up with my father's body. The only time I saw

(05:32):
my parents touch was for a brief Heimlich So I
had to get out of there. So when I got out,
I tried a bunch of different things, and then ended
up working at radio station briefly then realizing I could
write copy to help sales, and I liked the copy,
and then I started doing that and got creative with that.
Was heard on the radio in Philadelphia, just sitting in

(05:52):
and they said, you want to come out to LA.
I came out to LA, kept the ad agency I
had going, and then started branching out really quickly from
radio into doing TV and other stuff. So it was
not till later, not till I had no sense that
this was going to happen. It was kind of accidental
until you know, well, well after college. Unlike Jay, who
I think, well, Jay will tell you it was a child.

(06:13):
He wanted to perform well. In a way, I was
much in juxtaposition to my seemingly gregarious personality. I was
I was and.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
In many ways still am, you know, a kind of
a small personality kid.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
I was.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
I was a bullied kid. My parents both worked, My
siblings were much older than me, so I was kind
of a latchkey kid, a little bit of a loner,
a little bit of an introvert, kind of a you know,
a scared little kid. And my escape was into magic,
magic tricks.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
I had seen Mark Wilson and family on The Sullivan
Show or something or wonder Rama or whatever the hell
it was, and I said, oh, that looks like fun
to have to have powers. That sounds interesting when you're
intimidated a little kid. So I was I really did
you know? For however, it started when I was six
years old, and I was I got books and I

(07:13):
got magic kids, and I really put in the time,
and I thought magic would be an avenue for me,
not really thinking of it as performing. I didn't really
equate it that way. I just thought I was somehow
empowering myself in some very juvenile way. When I was
twelve or thirteen years old, we moved from one town

(07:35):
in New Jersey to about five towns over where I
knew absolutely nobody, and two things happened at the same time.
One I went to, you know, is sort of a
what was called a magic camp. It was just a
really bunch of courses, and I realized that I just
was not keeping up with my peers. My ability to
do close up magic was considerably less skillful than anybody else,

(07:57):
and I went, I'm not going to be good enough
for this. And at the same time, the first kids
that picked me up in the new town were the
theater kids. And again I didn't think of it as performing.
I thought of it as, oh, suddenly I have friends.
I have friends, never friends before. So I got pulled
into this community, and it turned out that I had
an affinity for being on stage, and it just kept growing.

(08:21):
And soon after that my enjoyment of actually going, Oh
I like doing this as much as I liked being
with these people started to develop, and then it became
a goal.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
So right, So for you to start, it was really
about just being a part of something.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, it was I. I was not an athletic kid,
so it was my team. I suddenly had a sports team,
you know, And you didn't find that magic Magic Camp.

Speaker 4 (08:45):
The team wasn't.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
There, Uh, not so much a team sport.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, how sad was on the Tale of One to Ten.
How sad was Magic Camp?

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (08:53):
It was.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
First of all, every kid there was in desperate needo therapy,
and you know, we were all we were all bottom
of the barrel on our you know, home turf, and
but some very talented kids there. I don't know if
they went on to have careers, but I I wanted
to be a close up magician. I have teeny tiny
little hands. To this day, I have a six month
old grandson. His hands are almost my size. So I

(09:15):
just couldn't manipulate the cards and the coins. And I
knew I wasn't going to catch up. I wasn't gonna
I wasn't gonna get ahead of the curve. And I went,
it's not gonna work out for me, So got'll look elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
You you start falling in love with with actually acting performing,
and for you, did you feel like you needed more training,
that you needed to go somewhere and study. Talk to
me a little bit about for you how because for me,
what's fascinating is making the jump right from which was

(09:47):
me which was like, oh this is a fun activity, right,
this is an extra curricular to then like, oh no, no,
this is what I want to do for the rest
of my life.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
There were two people who were very influential to me
deciding I wanted to be an actor. One we just
had on our podcast, Bill Shatner. I was a star
trek nut, and I was a star trek nut because
I fell in love with the charisma that Shatner had
on constant display in the role of Kirk, so I
understood that that was what acting was. I would basically

(10:20):
do anything as Bill Shatner. I would just be Bill Shannon.
But when I was twelve years old, thirteen years old,
these kids that I had fallen in with the fact
that I had grown up in New Jersey, we kept
going into New York to see Broadway shows and it
was very cheap to do that back then. And I
saw a very early performance of Pippen with Ben Vereen,
and Pippen was the first show that had magic tricks

(10:42):
in it that I went, oh, magic and I could
do that. Yeah, And I know this sounds as I
understand how ridiculous this sounds. But as I sat in
that chair, I went, I could be Ben Veren, which
means I have to learn to sing, I have to
learn to dance like that, and I have to have
that much charisma, I have to have that much power

(11:03):
on a stage. So I did. Literally the next week,
I was in tap dance classes and I was studying,
you know, voice, So I knew those were skills I
had to develop. I didn't really understand that I also
needed that there were skills in craft to acting. I
didn't realize that, but my parents were dead set as

(11:25):
supportive as they were because I started working professionally when
I was fourteen. I couldn't have done that if my
parents weren't behind that effort. But they were very realistic about,
you know, life in this business, and they wanted me
to go and have a college education. They were not
thrilled with the fact that my college education was going
to be as a theater major. But it was when

(11:46):
I got to Boston University and started studying theater that
I went, oh, there's like a craft to this, There's
like things you have to know. So that's when it
started to be when my eyes were open to you,
just don't imitate Bill Shatner every time his.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Mother, Bill Shatner and Ben Vereen. I know, that's what
I was thinking. It's also for me really interesting as
people began to find their place in in the business
and you know, to hear from you or to know

(12:24):
about you, that your your Broadway debut happens and merrily
we roll along. Obviously, as you mentioned singing and dancing
and acting, was there a part of you that felt
like you wanted to be a musical theater actor. That
that's that, that was your career, that's where you wanted
to live.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Well, that was that was the Ben Vereen influence. Yeah,
you know, part of the magic of Veren was the
way he moved. I I had. You know, we'd all
watched dancers. I grew up with Freda Staire and Jean
Kelly and you know, great dancers. But the the fossy
sense of sexualized, sensuous movement on a guy and a

(13:08):
guy that had some street swag to him, you know,
was just the most I went, well, that's, of course,
that's what you got to do. That's what I want
to do. And you know, my eyes had to be
opened to the fact that I was never going to
cut the same dash as a been for me. Now
that that reality check came along a little later, but

(13:30):
in the moment of my childhood when that all happened,
I went, Yeah, the musical theater. And that's what I
got pulled into by these theater kids. You know, first
thing I did with them was sound of music and
I was a Von Trapp kid, So musical theater was
what I thought would be my best and maybe only
area of success. I wasn't even sure that I could
carry the ball as a non musical actor.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Okay, Peter, at this time you have started working out
of college in radio and you come to LA, how
old are you?

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Much much later? I didn't come out here in my thirties.
I was I had a first family, and I had
an that agency that was doing okay. And then when
when the guy called said come out, that was a
big risk to come out, and I came out, kept
the agency going for as long as I could for
the people that were there, and then I didn't know
what I was doing in morning drive radio. Your first

(14:24):
job was a was a real eye opener for me,
and I thought I was going to go back. After
a year, I just thought it was over. It was
a failed experiment. But I got to meet some people
and it was really cool. And then talk radio called me.
This was Cale that was KLSS before Howard Stern. Talk
Radio called and I went and it was wild. They
were the number one station in the country at the time.
And here I am with everyone's coming in. Every guest

(14:45):
that you could have a president's actors, actresses, politicians, everybody
met everybody and interviewed everybody. So it was and amagenta.
I'm a professional guy who really wants to know everything
about you. I think you know we did a court
of course of thing and I never met you, but
I like coming in. I mean today, I prepped today
for what you and Jason have in common. You knew,

(15:06):
you knew my, you knew the brand of underwe what
just about? Yeah, I don't know you knew to think
that now people are going to a different place, disgusting,
But but like today, what you and Jason have in common.
Both studied theater right, both did nine seasons on this sitcom.
Both have a daytime emmy. Both of you didn't want

(15:27):
to be kind of type gests because you do a
lot of other stuff. Both were our directors at small theaters,
artistic directors at small theaters. So it's just cool to
come from that place. So I also want to be
here as an audience and not mentioned what I'm doing
because it's fascinating watching you guys. And you asked a
great prerect question, which was when's that moment when it
goes to hobby the holy crap, I got to deliver?

(15:48):
And then when does it go from I got to
deliver to how do I keep delivering. It looks a
competition and my nightmare. Always stay to Jason. And if
you're listening to this and haven't seen Jason onstage, He's
my buddy, He's my best friend. We are you all
the time, we have the podcast, we've done shows together.
I'm still in awe when he walks on stage, even
if I've helped write the piece. There's a different power

(16:09):
that happens. He just it's just this thing happens. And
you know, thats Brian, how amazing that is to own
a piece of that stage for X amount of time
and it's yours. You own it and you can do
with it whatever you want, and not everybody succeeds. And
it fascinates me when I watch him go out there
and he transforms into this thing. It's goosebump time. He

(16:29):
does it every time. It is really powerful.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Thanks Pety, and thank you Peter for not mentioning the
hairline that Brian and I.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Point Well, yeah you both have, Okay, don't I don't
thank Thank goodness, but both which, by the way, must
have played into both of your psyches growing up young,
because I remember everybody around me. It's that age I
remember asking this, this girl Anne, who I was dating
at the time, constantly at the back, the back standing,
it's standing in it. It's stinning, isn't it. She say,
you're neurotic. I go, no, I'm thinning. I'm sinning. And

(16:57):
she ran into me like thirty years later and I said, look,
see she said, it's the same.

Speaker 4 (17:01):
It's the same.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
But what age, like, what age did it happen to you?

Speaker 4 (17:07):
Yeah? What? What? What about you? Jason?

Speaker 1 (17:08):
I remember it almost of the day. I had braces
for nine years. I got them off. I came off.
I was seventeen, and uh, I remember the braces came off.
And I had a date that evening. So I went
to the gym and I'm in the shower and I'm,
you know, coming out of the shower and I'm drying
off my hair and I look in the mirror and

(17:30):
I see something like a thin spot at the very
very top, about the size of a quarter. And I went,
I literally said, are you freaking didn't me? I don't
get a day one day? And it was it really
was the beginning. By the time I got to college,

(17:52):
you know, my sophomore year of college, I had you know,
like like a solid drinkcoaster spot up there, you know,
and I and I panicked over and I cried about it,
and I really really thought it was the end of everything.
But you know, if you always say, what do you
want to tell your younger self? If it hadn't happened,

(18:14):
my career would not have happened the way it did
because I kept getting cast much older than I was,
which was far more interesting roles, right, and I had
an energy about those roles that guys that age didn't have,
so it made me kind of unique. I met my
wife when I was twenty, so it wasn't like I
was looking good and she got fooled. She's was going

(18:35):
on with anywhere?

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Did you ever, I mean, this is I guess this
is personal. Did you ever or consider doing something to
change it?

Speaker 6 (18:51):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (18:52):
My god, are you kidding? First of all, I was
one of the first rogaine users. But rogain, you know,
rogain now comes in two forms. There's a there's like
an oil base and there's a foam the oil base.
Back in the beginning, it was like all oil. So
if you have thinning hair and you put oil on
your head, you look like you belong on the street,

(19:13):
you know, so that was no good. Then I went
to hair club for men for a year and they
had the thing where they make fishing line and they
take your hair and they make a braid and then
they sew the to pey onto that braid and you
have to go every four weeks to have it to
have the crud the cottage cheese scraped off your head
because you can't shampoo under that.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
So, by the way, if they want to use that
as they're out, yeah, right, the Cottage.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
After Seinfeld, there was a period of time where people
where I got really close to a couple of rolls
and they ultimately didn't go with me because they said,
he looks so much like his character on Seinfeld, And
I'm going, you honestly can't see me, Like if I
grow a mustache or I put on a wig, you
can't figure that out. So as a sort of fu
I wore a to pay for two of you years,

(20:00):
publicly making no bones about it, going see, see, it
changed nothing, right, So if I could have changed it easily,
I probably would have, but nothing was was going to
be easy. And frankly, who you know, nobody cares anymore?

Speaker 2 (20:19):
No I know, I mean, I'll tell you briefly mine
because it's it's similar in a way. Now, I already
was playing older roles. I'm convinced that it was sped
up by that old makeup company ben Nye. Remember ben
Nye does the theater makeup. And I convinced that cutting

(20:41):
thinning for older roles and putting makeup on did something,
because it was right after that where it really took
a turn. So I went in, I got the I
got the prescription. I had to get a prescription for
the ro game. My dad was a he is a
doctor and got a dermatology that was just like buddy

(21:02):
and got me the stuff. And then it was explained
to me that it could have no effect, it could
stop the loss, or it could reverse like a clock.
But then what was explained to me was if you
ever stop, the clock speeds up to wherever you would say,

(21:23):
it leaves up. And I thought, am I going to
do this forever? Like that was for me? That was
the decision. And yeah, it was oily back then at
the time at least it kind.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Of had a alcohol.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
Yes kind of smell anyway, so I stopped.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
I blame the jew fro phenomena of nineteen seventy six,
where every Joe boy was getting an afro, and I
did it. And that's what I noticed. Oh sure, I
burnt every follicle, I assid and eat and I killed
every all.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
You premieerarily we roll on, then a number of other
Broadway shows, the Rank personals, Broadway Bound, Jerome Robbins, Uh Broadway.

Speaker 4 (22:31):
Were you happy? Was that?

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah? I was delirious. I I had only one.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Living in New York performing on Broadway.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
When I once, you know, Ben Vereen got under my skin.
I had one ambition in life that was to somehow
get to make a living on the New York stage.
I had no fantasies about film or television. It was
all about how do I get across the river and
make a living on that stage. And I realistically thought,
and I was pretty optimistic, you know, I didn't think

(22:59):
anything was gonna stop. But optimistically I thought, well, I'll
get out of college, I'll have to go do summer stock,
I'll have to do touring companies. Maybe by the time
i'm forty, if I'm lucky, i'll get to New York.
I'll get to Broadway. And I turn around and I
can't even finish college because I get cast in my
first Broadway show at twenty and not only AH Broadway show,

(23:21):
but Hal Prince and Steve Somedheim, which were the two
biggest figures in the American musical theater of the twentieth century.
And suddenly, you know, I'm calling them Hal and Steve
and my Way debut. It was I was. I was
all through the eighties doing all that theater in New
York as my primary living and living well, my wife

(23:41):
and I. You know, we had a lovely apartment that
we rented. We were able to put money in the
bank every year, and I thought, this is it. This
is as good as it gets. If I'm lucky enough
to keep this going, what a happy man am I?
And then you know, all the other stuff happened, and
you go, okay, what are you doing? Dream of now?
This is nuts? And it all gets through a podcast

(24:06):
with my friend Peter.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Finally, you were nominated for a Tony for Jerome Robbins's Broadway.
Talk to me a little bit about finding out that
you were nominated for a Tony.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Well again, you know, twelve year old kid in New
Jersey fantasizing in the bathroom I'm not holding the Oscar.
I'm holding of Tony. That's what it was all about.
It was I don't even know where to put it.
I mean, I know where it all sits for me now.
At the time, it was hard to remember. It was
all terribly exciting and a little bit confusing because it

(24:52):
felt like my life was happening at a very accelerated pace.
You know, when you dream of something as kind of
an end goal and it comes early, right, it really can't.
As much as it's exciting, it can throw you because
you go, well, what the hell do I dream of next?
I mean, I'm already disproportionately blessed. Where can this go

(25:12):
but down in some ways? So I was overwhelmed by
it all. And I can tell you I've said it
on things before. I was I would have been horribly
disappointed if I had lost the award. But I won it,
and it was a great night and I'm very, very

(25:33):
thrilled and proud to have it. But when I got
home that night, you know, we had done the party
and we had done everything, and I got home and
you know, I had twenty messages on my phone machine,
which was a lot. You know, it's a normal day
would be three or four twenties a lot, but it
wasn't one hundred, it wasn't a thousand. But the world

(25:54):
didn't change. And I got into bed that night with
my wife and there was a line in Pippin that
I used to quote all the time, because the story
of Pippen that Ben Maveren show is Pippen knows he's extraordinary,
but he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with
his life, so he tries a bunch of different things,
and at one point he tries being a soldier, and
at the end of that sequence, Ben Marien says to him,
well how was that for you? And Pippen says, I

(26:16):
thought there'd be more plumes. And I got in bed
that night with my wife, Dana, and she said, what
are you feeling? And I said, I thought there'd be
more plumes? And what I learned was, you know, it
was the beginning of learning that the destined. You hear
it all the time, It's not the destination, it's the journey.

(26:37):
It began to prove itself very very true for me
that night, so I'd no longer put energy on those
kinds of milestones. There are very different kinds of markers
and milestones and goals in my life that I think
ultimately have more personal value.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's that's so true.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
The journey, I mean, it's everything, and especially when you're
in a business such as ours, where there's a strive
for some sort of artistic creativity. There's wanting to be different,
wanting to change things, even roles that you play that
have happened before that you find your own way within that.

(27:27):
Performing in front of a live audience, then performing in
front of millions, I mean, all of those things. When
you know, when people would ask us about the show
or the Emmys or the Golden Globes or this or that,
it's like, you know, yeah, we had a couple of
great parties. We had a couple, but it's never what
I think about.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
It's also, you know, Peter, you should talk about this
a little bit. But you know, Peter and I have
done several projects together that by a barometer, a showbiz barometer,
they didn't succeed, they didn't become the goal that we
had hoped for. But Pete, they are probably the best
parts of our life together. Was every one of.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
Those objects I always say to Jason, you know, the
reason I came up with the first TV show was
so we could work together, because there's a different thing
to be friends, and then there's a real different thing
to share the stage together. You know, that's really something special.
And then when that went away, I said, oh, I
got to come up with the next thing so we
can be together. Came up with another show about a
family on a buss withfore covid who. I thought that

(28:30):
would be the nurse worst nightmare. You have kids in
your family and you know exactly what they're doing every
minute of the day. I don't want to know most
of that because the responsibility would be insane. So we
got to do that. Sold that, and then when the
corporate when the Donnie Clay is Bob Patterson's give me
the TV show we was a motivational guy went away,
we created a live show where we played corporations as

(28:51):
that character so we could continue doing that. We traveled
all over, then created a stand up show, and then
this podcast I didn't want to do. You know, I
was in radio. I didn't want to do a podcast
because there's so many wasn't sure. Then researched it came
up with the concept. Jason was in and thought and
the greatest thing. We were doing an interview the other day,
Jason said, the most amazing thing is like this. This

(29:13):
was the magic in my radio career that I got
to interview everybody and anybody and ask these kinds of
questions that you really want to know about if you're
really an interested person, and you can travel through cultural
time and space and find out about them and live
experientially through them. I mean, Jason's talking about Broadway. It
takes you on that stage. I always asked them, how
do you it's the same show every night? Are the

(29:35):
little nuances? Is that? What's the magic? I couldn't imagine
the redundancy. So it's such a different world, you know.
And I know you're laughing because you're smiling because the
same question. But it's been such an amazing journey to
share this. I wouldn't have gotten to meet you. I
wouldn't have gotten to do this with Jason with you.
So the next chapter that we create always is really exciting.
And again, will this be a huge success. It doesn't,

(29:58):
it'd be nice, and it's great of a lot of
people can hear it, and we move the ball and
kind of educate some people and make them laugh. But
you know what, this was already, what a great look
at that, What a great way to spend an afternoon
for a bit, you know, hanging out with you and
you can get into a jacent in a different way
in the audience.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
And it's a definition, it's a redefinition of what success is.
We tend as human beings to define success by the
response we get from other people as opposed to our
own experience of the thing we're doing. And the nice
thing for Peter and I is that the experience of
the doing of everything we've done has been some of

(30:37):
the best times in my life. We laughed together and
and worst stuff. And you know, when we were doing
about Patterson, when that show ended, Peter went into the
hospital and died on the table. He was that ill.
And so when I think about, you know, what was
the cost of trying to make a success for other people?

(30:57):
And yet we we laughed ourselves sick through them.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
And continue and continue to that's the only way to go.
And that was what we figured the showd let's learn
some stuff. But also if we're not laughing and we're
doing something, this device that we don't. The world doesn't say, hey,
we need another divisive thing, so if we can, yeah,
let's not do that. Let's let's educate a little bit.
Let's learn what we want to do, because we're both bumpkins.
And the funniest thing is is this evolves. Jason and

(31:24):
I argue all day long about everything when we do
when when we do these it becomes this sickening love.
And then we go back and go you talk to
my shut up you talking your show?

Speaker 4 (31:38):
Why did you ask? We're not doing that.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
We're not doing it now. But it is a joy.
You know that you do it. No need to do
this right, You can be out playing golf. Absolutely no.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
In fact, I have said so, I hope it sounds
like you are having the same experience. People ask about
me doing the podcast. I universally it is my favorite
and the best time of my day because getting to
hear people's stories and you know, being genuinely interested in

(32:17):
the question that I'm about to ask Jason, which is
you you're on Broadway. It's your dream, it's your it
is your everything. There may not be as many plumes
as you say when you finally get there and you
have the Ultimate and you win the Tony. Why the

(32:40):
change another opportunity or do you make a conscious decision
that you're ready for something else when you start moving Which,
by the way, for people who don't know, the year
that Jerome Robbins Broadway comes out and he wins the
Tony and that's his he gets the twenty phone calls,
this is the year that Seinfeld comes out for you.

(33:01):
For me, let me just say this first. For me,
when I was doing theater, I considered it a career change.
That's what it was for me when I moved to
Los Angeles and said I'm going to say no to
theater projects for the next year, and it really, for
me felt like a career change. For you, what is

(33:23):
the decision for you to begin to transition into television.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Was Brian, There was no decision. I am always I
was so happy. Thirty five years ago, Robert Duval won
an Oscar for Great Santini and he was being interviewed
on television and the interviewer said to him, it must
be great to get to a point in your career
where you're making your choices and you're doing the things
you want to do and people are coming to you,

(33:49):
And Duval looked at her and went, I don't know
what the hell you're talking about. Nothing has changed. Anybody
who basically wants to hire me, All they got to
do is ask, if it's not porn, I'll do it.
You know, I think there's maybe twenty five people in
our business at any given time, but we're literally making
choices and decisions and plotting a course. The rest of

(34:11):
us schmucks are just going, what someone wants me to
do something, Oh, that sounds interesting. So all of a sudden,
you know, I'm doing theater and Gary Marshall hires me
for Pretty Woman, Like, go, okay, I've been in a
couple of movies. Didn't change my life. This isn't gonna
Who knew Pretty One was going to be Pretty Woman?
And then this pilot comes up and they go, it's

(34:31):
the Seinfeld experience with the Seinfeld whatever, and I go, oh,
I saw Jerry Seinfeld the club. It seems fun. And
you know, I audition, I auditioned. It didn't come get me.
I didn't audition and I got it and we did it,
and you know, it was a failed pilot. It wasn't
going I went back to New York and they went, now,

(34:51):
we're going to do four more. I went, okay, you know,
I got nothing else going on, and it became a thing.
There was no choice. The next thing I knew, I'm
living in la I got kids, and I can't get
back to New York to do theater. And once I
had the kids, I kind of that was the change.
The children were the change, because doing eight shows a week,

(35:13):
it's the antithesis of a child's schedule. You know, they
come home from school, you go to work, they come
home on weekends, you go to work. They're not going
to school on holidays. You're working double on holidays. So
I knew if I wanted to be a participatory father,
the theater had to be a very very selective, small
piece in my life. So I focused on film and

(35:34):
television specifically until my kids got through high school, right
and then now I'm really more back in the theater
than anything else.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
That's that's really interesting, and I think that's partly that's
got to be. You know, I worked all around the country,
including New York and other places. I was more you know,
I was working at the Guthrie and Berkeley rep and
doing touring shows, and you know, for me, it felt
like it felt like I had to make a decision.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, it wasn't sort of happening as simultaneously as it
was for you. I mean simultaneously, but I mean moving
back and forth between doing this movie or doing that.
You know, I had done a couple of films, but
that was like, oh, they came to you know, Minneapolis
or whatever, and I just happened to get cast in
this or that. But that's interesting that for you it

(36:30):
wasn't a change, and so really was it was after
Seinfeld happened and your kids came that you decide to
focus exclusively there for them.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah. I remember when Seinfeld ended. My sons were ten
and six years old, and I said to my wife,
you know, honey, I think the best thing we could
do is go back to New York and go back
on the stage. I don't know what's going to happen
in film and television. I mean, I've got this elevated visibility,
but that's going to be really powerful on the stage.
I don't know if it's going to be meaningful out here.

(37:03):
And my wife, you know, has achieved more wisdom in
one lifetime than I will get in ten says to me,
you know, absolutely, whatever you want to do, we will go.
Let me just ask you a question. You know what
a the week is like on your deathbed? That's always

(37:23):
a good sentence on your deathbed. Do you think you
will remember your great nights on the stage or the
nights you tucked your boys to sleep? And I went okay,
and so the decision got made. And that's why I
started a theater. Well I didn't start it, but I
took over a theater company out here for several years.

(37:45):
Just I did the producers in LA for a year
with Marty Short. You know, I would keep my toe
in the water. But I was really working in Peter
Knows because we did a lot of it together. I
was working to try and get a television thing happening
again because I knew that was the best parenting schedule
I had ever had, and so was that I was

(38:06):
actively pursuing. But everything else has been pretty much a
happy accident.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
You come from the theater, which is the genesis of
this question. How close to you is George?

Speaker 1 (38:38):
You know, my knee jerk answer used to be not
at all, But you know now I don't honestly know.
I can tell you, George, there were three role models
in my head over the years that I played him. Initially,
when I was auditioning for it, I had Woody Allen
in my head. As we were doing some of the

(38:59):
early episodes. There was a good little doll up of
Jackie Gleeson that got in there as well.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
Yeah, I see that.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
But as soon as I as soon as I understood
that George was some sort of alter ego for Larry,
I had the great good fortune of having the role
model standing next to me for the next seven years.
And I feel like most of what I was doing
as George was trying to run Larry's physicalities and Larry's

(39:33):
vocal rhythms and Larry's I'm going to say performative sensibilities,
because actually I know Larry to be a much, for
lack of a better word, sweeter human being than the
character he plays. But I was just trying to funnel
all that through something that would fit on me. So
I would I would have always said, it's well, it's

(39:56):
not me, it's mostly my interpretation of Larry. But as
I go back of late and I sometimes look at
an old episode and I go that little piece of timing,
that look that I did, that little thing. That is
something I can see in my sons, and I go,

(40:16):
So that's pure Jason Arry. So I can tell you
only I understand George. George could be a despicable human being.
He is selfish, he's unethical, you know, he behaves very
badly at times, and.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
And what saves him from me, and the reason I
have affection for the character is because he is so
driven by a sense of I'm not cutting it, I'm
not worthy, I'm not good enough to be anything. But
he can't live with that, so he overcompensates and exaggerates
and lies and manufactures and acts out out of a

(41:03):
desperation that you know, who of us has not been
prey to that at one time or another, acted in
ways we're not proud of. I mean, I've been in
therapy for thirty five years. Try and not do that
stuff because it's such a common And I think that's

(41:25):
why George has the touch of the common man is
because everybody to some degree feels their own inadequacies, even
if they have a healthy ego, they feel their own inadequacies.
They feel when they go into any given room, that
they're not enough, they don't deserve to be there, And
for many, many people, they compensate by exaggerating, overblowing, making

(41:50):
inorganic choices to who they really are, and they get
hoisted on their own petard, much like a George. And
so I have sympathy because I think he is, in
many ways the human race trying to figure it out.
You know, No, I look at Peter. Peter has come
so so far and yet has so far to go.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
You know something, I'm thinking, you're much more like George
than you admit. So there's this there's a sense of
entitlement and George that Jason doesn't have. But when Jason
is slighted, and it's really funny, and I'm not trying
to segue back to the podcast, but Jason the the
origin of the podcast. The phrase came up with Jason

(42:34):
would I would crack up because and this is a George.
If we're driving and I get cut off, I go,
what the hell does it? You know, Jason does a
difference thing when he's cut off, or the waiter doesn't
bring the check in time, whatever. Really, really, it's this
huge enormous slight It really encompasses so much, they just

(42:56):
they just stupid.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
On the road and not just really really.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, but something is done and politically, something that's done
in the world that you really Jason noise really, which
is a succinct the way of saying, what are.

Speaker 4 (43:10):
They doing to me? What are they doing to me?
What are they doing to me? Exactly?

Speaker 3 (43:14):
And I couldn't get, by the way, Brian, I couldn't get.
They wanted really dark out, they wanted like a half
moneion bucks, and I went, there's no way. So I thought,
how do we make it even more absurd that I
don't believe your first answer, So I don't believe you
shows answer. So I'm already going really, no, really, I'm
assuming you're gonna bes me, and I'm going right to
the second. But that's Jason that when you say his house,
he like George, that's Jason. I see it. He's sweet,

(43:36):
he's a dad, he's this, And then it dissolves in
a second when that slight comes on.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
I'm one line away from going, you know, we're living
in a society, and I see it.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
So he's not George because he doesn't go to there, right,
but he will go there for money, but he doesn't
go there. But it's lurking. It is lurking under the skin.
Because you saw easily.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
How easily he went, Jason, How important for you, because
you just brought it up? How important for you is physicality,
vocal rhythm, posture. For lack of a better word, that's

(44:20):
an awful, non actory word. I don't know where that
just came from. But how important is that for you
to creating a character?

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Essential? Brian, I've been teaching acting for the last I
don't know, twenty five years, and it's been developing. My guru,
the man who really sort of brought clarity to me
about the craft is a gentleman who's still teaching and
a friend of mine. His name is Larry Moss. He's
New York based, and I started building off the principles

(44:50):
that Larry gave me about twenty five years ago when
I started doing masterclasses. But one of the main components
that's developed in my own look at stuff is that
without getting too much into how we make the sausage,
but you know, actors do many things. We portray feelings,
but we're not called emmotors or feelers. We speak the lines,

(45:13):
but we're not called speakers or orators, We're called actors.
And the thing we bring to text that makes it
more than a reading is actions, physicality, verbs, things we
try to do to each other as these lines tell
their story. And so the physicality of not only how

(45:34):
does my character inhabit and move through space? Is there?
You know, is there a person that I want to
use as a sort of a role model? Is there
an animal? Is there an idea that informs my body
in a different way? And then you know with the text,
what am I? What am I physically doing? What actions

(45:55):
are being played through all this? What am I trying
to get the other actors or other characters rather to
do in any given scene. So there's a huge physical
component to it. And it's the thing that a lot
of American actors in particular don't put much thinking into.
And it's the thing that I when I teach, I
kind of lead with it. And in many ways it

(46:17):
can screw up actors because they're being asked to think
in a different way and it's very off putting. But
for those that rally to it, you just see these huge,
huge leaps in their ability and what they can do,
and the sort of uniqueness of their performance, So it's exciting.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
What do you think the legacy of Sidefeld is?

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Oh gosh, you know, I have no idea, you know,
I keep waiting for us, for someone to have enough
perspective on it to really be able to answer that question.
I'm honest to God. Other than I really do think
it was a funny show. I can objectively stand back
and go, really funny and really performed and written exquisitely well,

(47:03):
and I give so much, you know, high fives to
the writers. People always say you guys were so good,
you were and I go, well, you know, if they
throw the ball to the five yard line, it's not
hard to fall. And the writers, the writing on the
show was consistently handing you, you know, a touchdown every week.
You just had to not fumble it. It's a very

(47:27):
funny show, and it's celebrated funny. It's but I guess
it in its zeitgeist, it was able to ask the
audience to look in the mirror at the things they
were going through all the time and do what Jerry
and Larry are able to do, and most good comics
are able to do, is to take the stuff that

(47:51):
seems mundane or oppressive or wrong or just crazy about
their lives, and see what's funny about it, To see
what it's funny in the human condition to give voice
to the false inflations of ego. And and you know,
I deserve this and I'm gonna get that, and I
don't deserve this, and this is right for me and

(48:13):
every man for himself and need before you know, there
was something about the way they portrayed those things. And
the fact, I mean the fact that we did an
episode on masturbation and got away with it and involved
a girl in it. At the time, I mean, forget
even just doing a show up masturbation to a girl

(48:35):
be part of it was unheard of. And but that's
what I mean about. I'm going to take a wild
swing and say ninety percent of the human population at
one time or another has probably touched themselves. To make
fun of that reality is so bold and so interesting
and makes it all so much more human to say, hey,

(48:57):
you know what, we all have. We all well think
too highly of ourselves at one time or another. We
all take the selfish path or the past the least
resistance every now and then, and we look awfully stupid
when we do. It did that, and I think it
allowed people to do what we are not as capable

(49:18):
of doing right now, which is to laugh at ourselves.
You know, I am as progressive a human as I
think I can be, But I worry. The only thing
I worry about is that as we struggle to figure
out how we all fit together, no matter who we
are and what we represent, if we lose our ability
to go, we are all kind of silly. We're all

(49:40):
kind of I mean, the struggles are real and the
wants are real, but we do behave in kind of
crazy ways every now and then. And if we can't
enjoy that about ourselves and about each other, then I
truly do worry for humanity. In some ways we lose
our sense of humor and the ability to go, we're

(50:01):
kind of silly. I mean, the things we want to
do are serious and they're vital, but we're kind of
silly in the way we navigate this crazy world.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Dude, I I look, I'm a nerd for the business.
I love the business. I read a lot about it.
And for whatever it's worth, the answer that you just
gave about Seinfeld, maybe it's been said a thousand times before.
But it's the smartest and most scinct answer that I've
ever heard about. It makes sense because you're you're a

(50:31):
smart guy, and you worked on it for a hell
of a long time. But you know, people talk about
the Office, and especially when the Office first started, because
it was different, like Seinfeld was different.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
They sort of connected.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Us in a in a way like we're we're a
progression for that, And for me that never made sense
to me because to me, our even though you know,
the form was totally different, I saw us as being
born out of Cheers, which is a collection of people
who are stuck together, either by choice or not in

(51:13):
different environments. But ultimately, you know, to be simplistic right now,
to not give an hour dissertation celebrating the ordinariness of people,
like finding small victories that may seem mundane to other
people that are but are very important. And for me,
Seinfeld was never that. It wasn't a show about nothing,

(51:36):
but your answer right there is finding those idiosyncrasies and
being able to laugh at ourselves and how important that
is and how today, yeah, we run the risk of
we need that lesson again, I should say, I think
that's for what it's worth. It's really smart to me,

(51:59):
so thank you, thank you for doing that. You already
told a little bit of the story. You're you're doing
Seinfeld and you meet this guy Peter who tells you
what you're going to start working on on next. Was
that Bob Patterson?

Speaker 4 (52:16):
Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:17):
By the way, I just want to announce our new podcast,
which we Lighten Up. Is a new podcast. You'll be
launching it today right after Lighting the Hell Up. Lighting
the Hell Up. Yeah, that was Bob Patterson right to you.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah, Peter Pete, right right down to the name. Peter
took me to that breakfast and he said, your next
show crazy, He said, do you know who Tony Robbins is?
I said sure. He said, I want to do a
show where Tony Robbins can't motivate his own family. And
the guy's name is going to be Bob Patterson and
he's gonna be and I went, well, that's not I said,
that's that's not. I don't think anybody's ever touched that.

(52:49):
That's really funny. A guy who's made a living telling
everybody else how to live their lives to improve it.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
And because we all know the behind closed doors allegedly
that's what's going on, you know. And I'm fascinated by
the self improvement, that whole movement that somebody says, you know,
what's going to take you to the next level, what's
going to really make you feel good about yourself and growth?
Walking on hot coals without any shoes for fifteenth ape

(53:16):
that is the thing that is going to that sweat
lodge is going to do it. And it's like, you go,
in what world? In what world do they have that formula?
And it's it's fascinating because I never know if it's
about people who want somebody else to do the push
ups for them, But I just always picture these motivational
guys at home going.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
Oh, no, we can't get a divorce.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
You know what that looks like to me?

Speaker 3 (53:37):
I got a book coming out, So we created the
show Bob Patterson, who what was his slogan, help me,
help you help me or whatever? Yeah, And then because
Jason circling Back was so intimidated by William Shantner, I
made William Shantner his nemesis just to watch the two
of them on stage together and watch Jason get to

(54:00):
act with the legend who launched his career, which was
stunning to watch.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
It was great, very.

Speaker 6 (54:07):
True, very true.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Hit the Road another collaboration. You co created that series
together as well. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
That was Jason, as we can hear when he plays aggravated.
There's nobody funnier than that.

Speaker 4 (54:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
So I remember in country music because I did country
music for about nine years. I know you're Willie Nelson
fan and from Texas. I guess you know Pat Green too,
right the whole Yeah, there you go. Yes, So I
helped him want to with wa wa.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Wait, hold on a second, Hold on a second, Pat,
How did you know that?

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Because I did country music for nine years and I
was the Westco station that that supported Wave on Wave
and hung with Pat. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
Pat Green was a childhood friend, fraternity brother of my
friend in my dorm's brother who I started listening to
Pat Green on the in my dorm room. Outside. Nobody
knew who Pat Green. This is what I mean about

(55:26):
my underwear. I don't know how you could put the
cool thing about Pat that we should do now. And
I'm thinking about this if you're a Pat Green fan.
Pat also, so Pat had a hit with Wave on
Wave with which with a national hit and he did
charity for us. Brad Paisley, who was a friend, played
with him. Whatever I put that together. But Pat, if
you're in Texas, you know Pat because Pat sells out

(55:47):
and he tours Texas and he played, you know what,
his big passion is golf. He's like an eight handicap,
you close to close to your handicap. So you guy,
if if you love him, you could play eighteen holl
And I singing for you, we should go play.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
I knew him when he was just I mean like literally,
like not even the note, Like he just was like
my friend's friend. But it was Pat Green And now
he's a big.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
Exploded in tex Willie Nelson, you're one, by the way,
I was on Willie Downson's bus and it's a combination
of a dope den in your grand grandmother's apartment because
there's like all these Danish boxes are open, and it's
it's really an amazing because he's older, I mean, Moie's
older now at this point. But what a what a

(56:34):
you've met him, obviously, he's what a character. What an amazing,
amazing birthday, amazing ninety Jason. Back to Jason and the
bus when he was doing country music. Jamie O'Neill was
in a family band with her parents, and she used
to say never always stuck with me that right before
you go in stages, well score you, I don't care

(56:55):
about you. One, two, three, I see America singing and
then you come off stage one dad, and I thought,
what a great thing that is that you're stuck and
you know that your kid is doing. You don't want
all the stuff you don't want to know that your
kids are doing you're forced to deal with because you're
on a bus traveling across the country and you're not
doing so well. So all of that and that's why

(57:15):
we launched it. And it was originally called Swallow, which
was the family of the family name and it takes agard.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
We said, it's the it's the it's the dysfunctional Partridge family.
So we said, what's another bird, and we went, oh, Swallow.
That's smart enough to realize that's not a good name
for a family man.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
And the bus would be defaced all the time, but
the network changed it to hit the Road.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Okay, are you better work collaborators or friends?

Speaker 1 (57:40):
There's no difference.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
I was just going to say that too. There's no
line as we do this. I love him so honestly, Brian.
You know the other part of Seinfeld, the other part
of the Office is, especially in today's world with COVID isolation,
you got to see friendships that were really and because
they spoke like real people spoke. They didn't speak in
sitcom set up in punchline, and there was stasis there

(58:04):
like there's in real life, and there was emotion and
you could actually play stuff out. It wasn't the old sitcom.
I think that people connected with that in such a
big way, just like they do reality television, which they loved.
They just loved. They were immersed in those characters. It
becomes part of who you are, touched on just like
music is powerful and you remember when that song came out,

(58:25):
what you're going through. I hear it with the next
generation for Seinfeld, where they go they're just finding it.
When you say what are they finding, They're finding the
joy of four people who were honest with each other
and talked in a way that no sitcom did before.
And the same with the Office, and then on and
on this real thing like independent movies. I think that
was a huge thing. So Jason and I are pretty

(58:47):
much off the air on the air, same the same deal.
And I'm blessed to have your best friend and be
able to do to hang like that and I'm forced
forced to be together.

Speaker 4 (58:56):
It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
And you know, honestly, Brian the difference from me and
I'm trying to figure it out, and I've been trying
to figure it out for many, many years. I know
this sounds like I'm trying to be cute and I'm not.
I never thought of myself as particularly funny, and suddenly
I was making a living playing comedy before Seinfeld, even

(59:19):
on stage in my Broadway days, I was doing comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy.
Unlike many people who sort of thought about comedy all
their lives, I didn't create a comedic persona for myself
in life prior to having to sort of present that way.

(59:39):
So with the podcast is so interesting for me. My
sense of humor, for whatever it may be, is informed
by the fact I grew up in New Jersey and
my dad and all his friends and a bunch of
my friends have that sort of Joe Peshy, if I
really think you're great and I like you a lot,

(01:00:00):
I'm gonna I'm gonna nudge at you, right, I'm gonna
try I'm gonna pick at you like a little like
a little chicken. And that is a that I found
that to be a real Jersey thing. And so that
is the sense of humor I grew up with. And
so often it'll become my Oh, I have to be funny.
They're expecting Jason to be funny. Let me go to that.
And I don't often like the way it comes off,

(01:00:22):
you know, because it's not it's not really who I am.

Speaker 6 (01:00:25):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
If Peter and I are doing the show, what you're
gonna hear from me is picking at Peter, and he'll
picking at me. But if you ask me off the show,
tell me about Peter Tilden, I go, he has my heart,
you know, I mind, we really do.

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
But it's genuine. The picking is genuine.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Yeah, my default is not to go to the sense
of humor. So even with the podcast now, in developing
our podcast personas has been so interesting because you know,
he says, we argue all the time, we discuss all
the time, we have different points of view, but on
the show we do what we step it up, you know,
we go what's your take, what's my take? Let's make

(01:01:00):
sure that you know that we have something. And it's
become a really interesting fun thing. But the most laughs
we've ever had in our life together outside is when
you know he'll be he'll be working on something, we'll
be working on a piece of material and he'll he'll
start to say something structural and I go, that's not

(01:01:22):
your area. Structure is not your area the structure, and
he's like, not my area. I did it. I did
a radio show for thirty years. I had four hours
to feel all about structure. It's not my area and
not your area. What do you what do you ask?

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
So when you say is that really ramp it up?
And then I go, so what's my area? And he'll go,
I haven't found it yet. We don't know what you are.

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
For your area.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
It's a great question, Brian, What a great question that was.
We've never been I've never thought of that. Is there
a line between the work and the friendship thing? And
he when I heard himself, I was really curious to
hear his answer because I feel the same way.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
It's it's yeah, we we The only difference is we
we don't generally lead with there is no bigger heart
in the world than Peter Tilden. If he found out
you had a charity, or you have a kid, or
you have somebody in need or you need he's not
only going, oh my gosh, that's so sweet. If there's
anything I can do. No, no, no, it's not. If

(01:02:16):
there's anything I can do, He's going, here's what I
can do. I'm going to make a call. I'm gonna
do a thing. The heart is stupid. We know that
with each other, and that is a big bonding thing
between us, but we on air, we would never talk
about it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:35):
Well, that's also the pathetic desire to be loved by everybody.
I mean the downside, pathetic because you just need that
much love.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Well, uh, your answer is supremely interesting to me. Yeah,
I mean our stories are very similar. When I am
introduced as a comedian, I feel physically uncomfortable. And I'm
not saying that as a joke, Like I feel like

(01:03:08):
I start like having to adjust because it's not It's
not how I define myself or see or or see myself.
I see myself as someone who creates characters and is
interested in building relationships and characters, not as making people.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
Laugh, but that's what he s expected.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, is your best friend in the business,
by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
No, no, And in part I'll be honest with you
actually now just to share something with you. Not that
like every single person is different. But I talked to Pendolette,
Penn and Teller Pendelette, very smart guy. He tells me
they've been together. I'm gonna mess it up now, whatever

(01:03:53):
it is, thirty forty years. They have dinner once a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right,
they you know, they keep it totally separate.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
I didn't expect that to be your answer. But that's
what made me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
That's what made me think, you know, there's been a
lot of great working well. You know, here's the thing.
People assume that Jerry and Michael and Julia and I
are the closest social friends. I honest to god, I
love them to death, all three of them. If they
asked me to walk through a hoop of fire, I
do it in a second. We are constantly doing things
for each other. But our experience on the show is

(01:04:30):
because of everyone's schedule. We were we were were friends,
we weren't really social friends. We didn't write all that
often and when the show ended, we didn't have that
history of being social friends. So unfortunately, you know, we
we chat and see each other very very rarely, and
when we do see each other it falls right back together.

(01:04:50):
But you know, it's just we sort of have the
pent Andella relationship of you know, tell you on your
birthday and say happy birthday.

Speaker 4 (01:04:58):
And happy birth yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
And your success and good luck on this project, and
you know, yeah, I see it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Yeah, we've talked about it quite a bit your new
podcast really no, really, by the way, I don't know
how you could listen to the to the two of
you together and not want to go deeper into your relationship.
This bizarre and awkward, craziest thing that you've learned from

(01:05:26):
a guest so far.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Oh, it's one that hasn't aired yet. And in fact,
you give it away, you tease it, don't give it away.
Boiler no, no, no, boiler alert inclusive.

Speaker 4 (01:05:38):
He'll blow it, he'll give it away.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
We may not use it. I think it's important that
we share it. Peter introduced me to a guy who
was a former white supremacist, and the really, no, really,
of why we had him on the air is one
of the reasons he was compelled to leave the movement
is he was a big scient Feld fan. Anyway, these
Jews can't be all bat so.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
The white supremacist.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
He's a major He was a major voice of a
brand new movement and had and for many years. And
when I when I booked him, because I'd known him
from radio when I did my radio, He's fascinating, he's articulate,
he's smart, really and and the really, you know really
was that he left partially because of Seinfold, But the big.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
Yeah we had we were having, you know, a conversation
that went funny and went not funny, and but we
said to him, tell tell me something about these rank
and file, you know guys that we see on the street,
and we go, these are not good people. You know,
these are scary people. I I I I wish I

(01:06:43):
didn't have to share a world with this kind of energy. Right,
What what don't I know about them? That I could
see them differently? And without blinking an eye? He said,
they're all broken, they all have a trauma. And he said,
I will tell you that you will move them far
faster and far further by looking at them and saying,

(01:07:07):
you know, what some stuff really must have happened to you.
I'm sorry it happened to you. And if you can
find your way to not shouting at me or hating me,
maybe we could talk about it sometime. Because you're a
human being. I'm a human being, he said, You'll go
so much further. In the fact, it was part of
his conversion was people who should not have been kind

(01:07:28):
to him. That's what you mean, because what got him
into the movement was people being unkind, people taking advantage
of him, people not seeing his heart or taking advantage
of his heart until it shattered, and then he was
susceptible to wanting to feel powerful. And that wasn't like

(01:07:49):
the most revelatory thing I ever heard, but to hear
it coming from someone who had been through it, and
to hear the prescription for the greatest thing you can
do to help mend it is to find your compassion
for that human being at their very worst. And I
thought that that was a huge lesson.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
He said, it's tough because it's counterintuitive for you to
reach out but know that they're broken. And he said
everyone that I hated that chipped away at me because
they were nice to me along the way. It eventually
wore me down because the kindness is what got me
out and mine is a little bit my Oh wow,
was recent fascinating astronaut who was in a space station.

(01:08:32):
We were talking about space junk. It was really not
really are we going to be landlocked in a couple
of years, because there's so much space hunt that it's glowing,
and we got an astronaut to talk about it. And
I didn't know if space walk was seven hours long
that your arms are exhausted because you're doing it with
your arms and if you get untethered, there is a
major tether, but it can pull you back really fast

(01:08:52):
and you could hit the vehicle and bad stuff out
your helmet, brakes, whatever. But the best moment for me
was he's got something to hydrate himself in his suit
so he can sip on it some water. And he said,
I'm in my spacewalk, it's is my space walk, and
I see something really little plastic piece float by my

(01:09:12):
eyeline And at that moment, I realized the tip broke
off the thing I hidrate with, and I'm going to
drown on my helmet while I'm doing a spacewalk. Uh,
huh right, So he starts stipping, like, can you imagine. Yeah,
it's one of the little things you have to put
up with doing his spacewalk, drowning the other helmet.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
The other part of that, and then I may have Yeah.
He talks about doing a spacewalk for seven hours with
a partner and they go out and they retrieve this
piece of a thing that they need. This is like
a handle, he said. It looks like a steering wheel,
and it's about a half inch of solid aluminum and
they've got it under one guy's got it under his
arm and they come back in after the whole thing,

(01:09:55):
and they get in the air lock and they hold
up that piece of material and there's a hole right
through it, which meant that some piece of space junk
traveling at seventeen five hundred miles per second or per
minute passed through that thing that he was holding under
his armpit. And he said, they looked at each other
and they said, you know, if that had hit one

(01:10:16):
of us, done, good night.

Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
Yeah, it's really there's so much that's there's so much
we find out when you dig deep, you know, you
start peeling the onion about just living in that space
station is insay in weightlessness the entire time. It's the
size of a six bedroom house, accept so much bigger
because you're using all the all the ilume, the ceiling,
the walls, whatever. So but it's bizarre. You got to
tether yourself to a sleeping bag, and I think Mark

(01:10:43):
Kelly bunged himself so you could feel gravity a little
bit of gravity and you don't feel your arms, so
you got like phantom limbs going and your eyes change shape,
so your visions are bizarre.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Yeah, really no, really airs weakly on Tuesdays the same
day as get your off the beat and really no,
really double let's do a double.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
Do milk and a cookie, A milk and a cookie.

Speaker 4 (01:11:11):
I'll be whatever you don't want to be.

Speaker 6 (01:11:14):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
You can listen on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcast. Guys,
thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate both
of you so much getting to know you both better.
And yeah, this is wonderful. You have an idea for
the two of us. You give me a call.

Speaker 6 (01:11:30):
You got it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
I'm halfway there already. It's called lighting up.

Speaker 4 (01:11:34):
It's working. Thanks for being so gracious.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
Thanks you guys, Jason Peter, thank you so much for
joining me today.

Speaker 4 (01:11:57):
That was that was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
And look your podcast, I mean a podcast that somehow
both breaches space and finds humanity in the worst of us. Guys,
I'm all ears. Congratulations on that. Listeners, We're gonna see
you next week for another episode. We're gonna have another
one of your favorite people on the podcast. I mean,

(01:12:22):
besides me, We're gonna have me and then also someone
else that you love equally as much.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
I know who it is.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
And you know what I'm not telling. Nope, I am
not telling. But come back and join us. We're gonna
tell some stories. We're gonna have some laughs, we're gonna
learn a little bit, and who knows, I might even cry.

Speaker 4 (01:12:43):
We'll talk to you then.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced by me
Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Ling Lee. Our senior
producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris,
and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary,
and our intern is Sammy Katz. Our theme song Bubble

(01:13:13):
and Squeak, performed by the one and only Creed Bretton,